Why he should: Between the international economic crisis, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing bloodshed in the Middle East and a brewing currency war, the Obama administration’s foreign policy in its first term has largely been a series of responses to crises, either new or inherited. Even what should have been a relatively uncontroversial arms control treaty with Russia turned into a knock-down, drag-out fight with Senate Republicans
In the coming year, major progress on these pressing issues is unlikely, so Obama should take the opportunity to focus on the positive in 2011. That means fence-mending visits to regions like Europe and Latin America, which have felt left out by the administration’s Middle East- and Asia-centric agenda. Obama should give human rights hawks within his administration, such as Samantha Power and Susan Rice, freer rein to call out abuses. He could also take advantage of one of the few perks of a Republican Congress and push to ratify trade agreements with close U.S. allies like Colombia and South Korea.

Why he won’t: The crises aren’t going anywhere. U.S. troops are still under fire in Afghanistan, and Obama is likely to come under criticism whether or not he honors next summer’s self-imposed deadline to begin withdrawing troops. And the longer Israel-Palestine goes without a settlement on final borders, the less likely a two-state solution becomes. Obama’s still going to be troubleshooting this year

HU JINTAO

Resolution: Prove the haters wrong

Why he should: China, which had already badly handled a censorship showdown with Google earlier in the year, ended 2010 on a low note with its petty and brutal response to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. When even Premier Wen Jiabao is considered too controversial for public consumption, the Chinese government’s mistrust of its own people has clearly gotten out of hand.

The Communist Party has achieved a veritable economic miracle in recent decades, bring tens of millions of people out of poverty. There’s reason to think that China’s current rulers would still enjoy the support of their citizens if they were willing to open up. Why not make 2011 the year China proves it’s not afraid of criticism and loosen some of its onerous restrictions on freedom of expression?

Why he won’t: Because the current system is more or less working. As long as China’s economy continues to grow, the public stays quiescent, and other capitals continue to kowtow to Beijing’s wishes on questions like the Nobel Prize, there’s no incentive for Hu and the rest of China’s leadership to alter their behavior.

VLADIMIR PUTIN

Resolution: Give Dmitry a chance

Why he should: It would be too much to expect Russia’s authoritarian prime minister to turn into a democrat over night, but at the very least, he could give the elected leader of the Russian people — President Dmitry Medvedev — a change to actually govern. There are signs that if given the opportunity, the technocratic Medvedev might try to institute some much-needed liberal reforms without shaking up the power elite in a way that threatens Putin’s position. During the last year before presidential election season kicks off, why not give Medvedev a chance to actually be president?

Why he won’t: Because it’s not part of the plan. It’s looking increasingly likely that Putin will attempt to reinstall himself as president in 2012; this year, we should expect to see more, not less activity from the prime minister’s office.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

Resolution: Quit while you’re ahead

Why he should: Right now, the 74-year-old Berlusconi’s incredible political saga seems set to end in one of two ways. He continues to govern — fighting off legal challenges to his sovereign immunity and threats to his ruling majority — until he dies in office. Or he’s forced from office and put on trial for one of the many, many charges against him. If he’s smart, Berlusconi will work out a grand bargain with the opposition in which he agrees to step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution and lives out the rest of his days in pleasant debauchery.

Why he won’t: He doesn’t trust the judges. The judiciary is the one branch of Italian government where Berlusconi doesn’t have any friends. The moment he becomes a common citizen again, he has to expect the judicial branch to come after him, deal or no deal. Plus, Berlusconi has never expressed any remorse for the transgressions of which he has been accused and seems to view the prime minister’s office as his birthright. He won’t give it up without a fight.

DAVID CAMERON

Resolution: Ease up

Why he should: Cameron was as good as his word this year, unveiling a deep set of cuts to government services, the civil service, and the defense budget, and increasing university tuition as part of an ambitious austerity program. But the fees increase, in particular, brought young Britons out onto the streets in scenes reminiscent the late 1960s. If the government goes through with further planned cuts, he risks fracturing his fragile coalition with the Liberal Democrats and even losing support from his own party.

It’s time for Cameron to prove that his “Big Society” vision is about more than just cutting services. Perhaps one place to start is immigration. As the case of Stockholm bomber Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly shows, Britain has an ongoing problem with the radicalization of Muslim immigrants. The Cameron government, not seen as touch-feely on immigration issues, could make the integration of Britain’s Muslim community a major priority.

Why he won’t: The Cameron government views deep cuts as an economic necessity, given the country’s still-high level of public debt, political consequences be damned. Plus, British votes overwhelmingly support further restrictions on immigration.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU

Resolution: Think big

Why he should: A politician of the Israeli prime minister’s stature and ego doesn’t want to be remembered as one of a series who held the line against a peace deal while the two-state solution died on the vine. Netanyahu needs to move beyond this year’s back-and-forth over a settlement freeze and push for a final resolution on borders before the Palestinian state simply declares its sovereignty unilaterally. This will involve standing up to both hard-liners in his own cabinet and the powerful settlers’ movement in the West Bank, but like his right-wing predecessor Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu may be uniquely qualified to explain the necessity of concessions to a skeptical Israeli public.

Why he won’t: Netanyahu still relies on the support of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party in his coalition, led by controversial figure Avigdor Lieberman. So far, there’s no sign that Bibi is willing to risk the fall of his government on the Palestinians’ behalf.

HUGO CHÁVEZ

Resolution: Be like Lula

Why he should: In the remaining hours of 2010, Chávez ought to look south, where Brazilian President Luiz Inacío Lula da Silva is stepping down with one of the highest popularity ratings on Earth. Chávez could have adopted Lula’s style of practical populism, combining generous social programs with support of trade and private industry and a foreign policy widely seen as independent, without falling back on kneejerk anti-Americanism.

Instead, Chávez has opted for old-fashioned Latin American leftism, which has left his country coping with economic distress and increasing international isolation. His once-unchallenged control on Venezuela’s legislature is now starting to slip. But it may not too late for the Bolivarian revolutionary to take a cue from his outgoing neighbor, ease up on private industry and political dissent, and let his country grow into the Latin American power it should be.

Why he won’t: Chances for political reform in Venezuela tend to rise and fall with oil prices, and those have been on an upswing lately. El presidente shows no signs of loosening up these days, having just pushed through new emergency decree powers for himself.

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD

Resolution: Be the hard-liner’s reformer

Why he should: It would be the ultimate irony if the man seen as the face of Iran’s hard-line Islamic regime became the agent of its undoing, but there have been signs lately of the president splitting from Iran’s clerical establishment. Ahmadinejad has been blasted by conservatives recently for criticizing Parliament and promoting an “Iranian” rather than “Islamic” school of thought. He has also accused other members of the government of “running to Qum [Iran’s religious capital] for every instruction.” The tensions came to a head over his recent firing of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was widely supported in Parliament. Could Ahmadinejad build his conservative nationalist supporters into a movement capable of challenging Iran’s dominant theocracy?

Why he won’t: Despite growing fault lines between Ahmadinejad and the hard-line clerics and their allies in the legislature, he owes them for supporting him during last year’s election crisis and is unlikely to ever step too far out of bounds. Plus, there’s the supreme leader to worry about, and he still calls the shots.

KIM JONG IL

Resolution: Don’t start a war

Why he should: In the past, Kim has always been able to ratchet up tensions on the Korean Peninsula right to the breaking point, offering last-minute concessions and returning to the negotiating table to keep sanctions light and foreign aid flowing. But he may have gone too far this time. After this year’s sinking of the Cheonan warship and the shelling near Yeonpyeong Island, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is under heavy pressure to retaliate against future attacks. North Korea wisely backed off its threats near the end of December, but any future military action could mean war. If nothing else, Kim should ratchet down the rhetoric out of his own family’s self-interest.

Why he won’t: It’s succession time. Chosen successor Kim Jong-Un is relatively unknown, and is closely identified with a disastrous currency devaluation scheme last year. The need to obtain military “victories” for the future leader may lead North Korea toward further provocations.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — 2010 was a year marked by uncertainty and volatility, to say the least.

Stocks got off to a good start in January but worries about European debt quickly deflated that early optimism. As the market got accustomed to these daily anxieties, and Greece managed to crawl out of its default hole, stocks started to crawl higher.

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The Dow Piano
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Here’s what the market sounded like in 2010. Take a listen.

But a dour jobs report on July 2 sent stocks plunging to their lows for the year.

All was not lost. On Aug. 27, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s mere hint of another stimulus put stocks on an upward trajectory for the rest of the year. But let’s not forget May 6, when the “Flash Crash” sent the Dow spiraling down almost 1,000 points in a matter of minutes.

Put bluntly, 2010 was a roller coaster ride, said David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors — and the ride may not be over in 2011.
Fortune 500: Top-performing stocks of 2010

Europe’s debt problems remained an underlying theme throughout the year. And in the second half, commodities took center stage, with gold surging to record highs and oil topping $90 a barrel for the first time in two years.

“Extreme volatility and high uncertainty go together, and both are here to stay for a while longer,” Kotok said.
Here are the highlights from 2010

Jan. 4: Stocks start the year on a positive note, closing at 15-month highs. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) starts at 10,584; the S&P 500 (SPX) at 1,133; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (COMP) at 2,308.

February: Worries about Europe reach a fever pitch. Investors fear Greece might default on its national debt and trigger a domino-effect of defaults in Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Concerns about Europe’s debt crisis underpin the market all year.

April 20: A deadly explosion on an offshore oil rig operated by BP sends oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. It takes five months to seal the leaking well. BP (BP) shares have struggled to make up their losses ever since, and ended the year down 27% from April 20.

April 23: Greece requests a $53-billion bailout. (Dow, S&P end at 19-month highs)

May 6: In one of the most gut-wrenching hours in Wall Street history, a glitch in automated trading, dubbed the “Flash Crash”, sends the Dow plunging almost 1,000 points before it recovers to close with a 348-point loss.

June 7: The euro closes at a four-year low of $1.192 as fears about the European debt crisis resurface. (Dow closes at a 7 month low)

July 2: Stocks plunged to 2010 lows in the aftermath of a weaker-than-expected June jobs report.

July 21: President Obama signs the Wall Street reform bill into law, enacting the most far-reaching financial overhaul since the Great Depression. Stocks slump after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke tells Congress that the outlook for the economy is “unusually uncertain.”
0:00 /0:45NYSE Mashup: 2011 stocks in a word

Aug. 27: In a speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Bernanke first hints that the Fed may initiate a second round of monetary stimulus, known as quantitative easing or QE2. (Dow surges 165 points)

Nov. 2: In the mid-term elections, Republicans win back the House. The shift in the balance in power is generally seen as a win for Wall Street.

Dec. 31: Stocks end the year on a high note. The Dow ends at 11,578, up 11% from the beginning of the year. The S&P 500 finishes at 1,258, up 13% for the year, and the Nasdaq rises 17% to end at 2,653. To top of page

Gift giving is a way for guests to celebrate your wedding and to help you stock your new home. Here’s what to keep in mind when making your bridal registry.

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What are you waiting for? Registering for wedding gifts should be one of the first tasks you tackle when you get engaged. Friends and relatives will be looking to buy wedding gifts as soon as he pops the question. Really! Take the guesswork out of gift buying by making sure they know what you want. You don’t need to complete your list just yet, but at least have a selection for guests to browse.

Hitting the stores together is essential. After all, the gifts are for both of you. To decide what you need, take inventory of the things you already have and see where the gaps are. Talk about the style of home you’d both like, and split up the final say (you could alternate items) to make it fair. (Maybe he gets to make final decisions on electronics, while you get to choose the kitchen stuff since you’re the chef.)

Don’t feel like you just need to register for china and flatware. Many stores have wedding registries now, so feel free to include whatever it is that will make your new house a home, be it electronics, appliances, or even camping equipment.

Try to avoid filling your list with things you’re never going to use. If you two aren’t the formal party types, then you probably won’t need a crystal punch bowl, as compelling as it may seem when you walk by with that registry scanner. Also, be extra-sure before you register for anything that’s monogrammed. Once your name is on it, you probably won’t be able to return it.

It’s always a good idea to inquire about a store’s exchange/return policies. The great thing is many wedding registry retailers have amazing customer service to accommodate to-be-weds’ needs (for example, you might suddenly realize that you don’t really have room for 24 chargers and want to return, say, eight of them). That said, being aware of the store’s return and exchange timelines will help you better plan and manage your registry.

As much as you may be hankering for that gorgeous $350-a-place-setting silver, be sure to register for items in a wide range of price points: under $50, under $75, under $100, under $200, and beyond, so all of your guests can choose gifts they can afford. You don’t want your college friend feeling overwhelmed by the fact that he can’t find a single gift; and on the opposite side, you don’t want your parents’ closest friends to have to buy you a multitude of smaller items to give you a generous gift.

At least one (and preferably all) of your registries should be available online. Guests should also be able to place their orders in person, over the phone, or by fax. If you’ve registered at a boutique retailer that doesn’t offer online services, you should be okay, as long as that’s not the only place you’ve registered. We live in a hectic world and you want to let guests be able to order you a gift — even if it’s 2 a.m.!

When a guest buys a gift for you, your registry should automatically update, allowing other guests to see what’s been purchased (and allowing you to see what’s on its way!). Make sure to revisit your registry often (trust us, you’ll be visiting several times a day once the wedding day nears), and update it with additional selections as products are purchased so that guests always have a variety of things to choose from. Aim to have at least twice as many items on your list as guests at your wedding.

Sure, some couples love receiving cash, but asking for it is not exactly Future Mr. and Mrs. Manners-approved. A more etiquette-friendly option? Try gift cards. Many stores allow you to register for them and you can use them to buy the things you want and need…later. If you are anxious for cash gifts, ask one or two close friends and immediate family members to politely spread the word.

Be gracious — let your guests know their gifts have arrived — promptly. Thank-you notes for gifts received before the wedding should be sent within two weeks of their arrival. Notes for gifts received on or after the wedding day should be sent within a month of your return from the honeymoon. In all notes, be sure to mention the gift by name.

Kai Ryssdal: There’s a big festival coming up on the Chinese calendar tomorrow: It’s called the mid-Autumn festival. For the past week or so, stores over there have been stocking up on the traditional gift of the season: Mooncakes. They’re pastries, small but rich, with a flaky crust and a sweet filling, usually made of lotus paste.

More than a billion people wanting the same thing on the same day? Smells like a business opportunity to me.

Rob Schmitz: Mooncakes have been likened to pastry hockey pucks. At around a thousand calories, they’re almost as dense. This helps explain why the Chinese don’t buy mooncakes for themselves. They gift them.

Shaun Rein is a strategy consultant in Shanghai.

Shaun Rein: It’s a way of showing respect to business partners and people you want to be close to, and it’s also a way to give them outright bribes.

Yes, bribes — and we’re not talking about briefcases full of mooncakes, but their paper representations, mooncake vouchers.

Here’s how it works: Buy a voucher from a company that makes mooncakes. Give it to your friend, client, local government official. And they, in theory, redeem the voucher for mooncakes. What most people do, though, is sell the vouchers on the black market for cash.

Rein: There’s no embarrassment about saying, “We don’t want this mooncake.” Let’s be pragmatic and get some money out of it.

And when a fifth of the world is in on this, that money becomes an underground economy worth billions.

Dozens of workers pack boxes of mooncakes at a Haagen-Dazs redemption center in Shanghai. Thirteen years ago, the company had an epiphany: They realized the Chinese give mooncakes, but many don’t eat them. It’s like the Christmas fruitcake dilemma in the West. So they thought: Why not make ice cream mooncakes? The ice cream mooncake was born.

Gary Chu manages the company’s China operation.

Gary Chu: It’s huge business. It’s a very important business for us. It’s growing at double digits every year.

Soon after, Starbucks, Nestle and Dairy Queen got into the business. This year, Haagen-Dazs sold 1.5 million boxes. To buy one, you’ll need $50 to $100 worth of vouchers. Want an ice cream mooncake this year? Sorry. Vouchers are sold out. Your only option is the black market.

A back-alley vendor named Yin Jing wears a fanny pack full of Haagen-Dazs mooncake vouchers. They’re made of thick paper; each one has a laser engraved hologram, just like currency. They float like currency, too. Last week, their price peaked. Now with just days to go before the festival, Mr. Yin is looking to unload.

Yin Jing: After the festival’s over, all these vouchers will be expired. So I have no choice. I’ve got to start dropping the price.

This selling frenzy reaches the highest levels of society. Just blocks away, a vendor who only gives his surname — Zhang — just negotiated a deal on reams of vouchers.

Zhang: These are all from government officials. They get so many as gifts, and they feel too embarrassed to sell them to me in person, so they ask their wives to meet me in a coffee shop.

Fresh from his secret government rendezvous, Zhang’s got his game face on, trying to sell all these vouchers before time runs out. If he fails? He’ll be forced to succumb to the spirit of the season by giving away dozens of boxes of mooncakes and keeping a few for himself, at which point the giving will stop, and the losers of this annual game will be forced to eat.

Facebook likes big numbers — it now has more than 500 million users, each one of whom can have as many as 5,000 friends. Yet as a privately held company, its ownership base must remain small, or it will have to disclose publicly its financial results.

A surging shadow market in the privately held shares of Facebook is making such restraint difficult and could spur the company to go public — even as its executives try to tamp down speculation about an initial public offering — much as similar pressure helped push Microsoft and Google toward their own initial public offerings.

The frenzied trading in Facebook, as well as in Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn, has caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York Times DealBook first reported on Tuesday that the agency had asked for information about trading in all four companies.

While it is unclear what exactly the S.E.C. is focusing on, legal experts say that one clear area of inquiry relates to a federal law that establishes a limit for private companies of fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a company has 500 shareholders, it must register its private shares with the S.E.C. and publicly disclose its financial results.
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Facebook is well aware of this issue. In 2008, the S.E.C. allowed Facebook to issue restricted stock to employees without having to register the securities, a move that would have required the company to publicly disclose financial information.

A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment.

The company has also tried to limit the number of employees selling shares. This year, it put into effect an insider trading policy that bars current employees from selling stock.

But the pace of trading in Facebook shares, as well as trading in other social network companies, has accelerated nonetheless.

Over the last year, several private exchanges have formed to match the buyers and sellers of these companies, which have spiked in value. Facebook is now valued at $42.37 billion, more than tripling in value over the last 12 months, according to SharesPost, an online marketplace for private investments.

The selling shareholders in the companies are former employees and early-stage venture capital investors who are already sitting on huge profits. Buyers are wealthy speculators, many of them pooling their money into investment vehicles sponsored by Wall Street firms.

One potential legal issue is whether the investment pools formed by a group of investors are a way to sidestep the 500-shareholder restrictions.

These private transactions do not always go smoothly, as evidenced by a seven-year-old lawsuit involving a private sale of Google shares. The soured deal serves as a cautionary tale of the risks inherent in these types of transactions.

In 2003, Scott Epstein, a former Google consultant and interim vice president for marketing at the company, struck a deal to sell about $700,000 of pre-initial public offering Google stock to a group of investors who had pooled their money to buy the stock at $19.75 a share.

In late 2003, around the time that Google announced it was pursuing an initial public offering, the investors claimed that Mr. Epstein had reneged on the agreement. Mr. Epstein, in turn, claimed that Google had improperly refused to transfer his shares, despite his having complied with various requirements.

The investors filed a breach of contract lawsuit against him in California state court.

On the eve of the trial in May 2005, after 18 months of litigation — Google had already gone public by then — the parties settled the case. Mr. Epstein paid the investors roughly $100 a share in cash, or about $3.5 million, according to two people with knowledge of the settlement who requested anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss it.

Mr. Epstein declined to comment, citing a confidentiality provision in the settlement.

Although the investor group made about five times its original investment, the agreement was bittersweet not only because of the bruising litigation but also because Google shares were trading at more than $200 a share at the time.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had not been keen to take their company public. But they had widely distributed stock options to employees. In 2003, five years after they founded the company, Google crossed the 500-shareholder threshold — a rule that is part of a 1934 securities law. The company went public the next year. That initial offering created hundreds of Google millionaires.

Microsoft, founded in 1975, had been around for more than a decade when it sold shares in an initial public offering in 1986. Because venture capitalists owned very little of Microsoft, its founder, Bill Gates, controlled the company and had little interest in a public offering. Microsoft was so profitable that it also had little need for capital.

But Mr. Gates had also been handing out shares to company executives and recruiting programmers with stock options. So in 1985, he reluctantly agreed to a public offering, which made Mr. Gates one of America’s wealthiest individuals.

Like the Google founders and Mr. Gates before him, Facebook’s iconoclastic founder, 26-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, insists he is a reluctant seller. He and his fellow executives have sought to dispel expectations of a Facebook public offering any time soon. But as the company grows, it risks exceeding the 499 shareholder limit.

December 28, 2010

Niall Ferguson in his book The Ascent of Money distills the formation of bubbles into five stages:

1. Some change in economic circumstances creates new and profitable opportunities.
2. Euphoria sets in, whereby rising expected profits lead to rapid growth in share prices.
3. The prospect of easy capital gains attracts first-time investors.
4. The insiders realize that the now-exorbitant price is unsustainable and begin to take profits by selling.
5. As share prices fall, the outsiders stampede for the exits at once, causing the bubble to burst.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Deep in the bowels of Walt Disney World, inside an underground bunker called the Disney Operational Command Center, technicians know that you are standing in line and that you are most likely annoyed about it. Their clandestine mission: to get you to the fun faster.
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To handle over 30 million annual visitors — many of them during this busiest time of year for the megaresort — Disney World long ago turned the art of crowd control into a science. But the putative Happiest Place on Earth has decided it must figure out how to quicken the pace even more. A cultural shift toward impatience — fed by video games and smartphones — is demanding it, park managers say. To stay relevant to the entertain-me-right-this-second generation, Disney must evolve.

And so it has spent the last year outfitting an underground, nerve center to address that most low-tech of problems, the wait. Located under Cinderella Castle, the new center uses video cameras, computer programs, digital park maps and other whiz-bang tools to spot gridlock before it forms and deploy countermeasures in real time.

In one corner, employees watch flat-screen televisions that depict various attractions in green, yellow and red outlines, with the colors representing wait-time gradations.

If Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride that sends people on a spirited voyage through the Spanish Main, suddenly blinks from green to yellow, the center might respond by alerting managers to launch more boats.

Another option involves dispatching Captain Jack Sparrow or Goofy or one of their pals to the queue to entertain people as they wait. “It’s about being nimble and quickly noticing that, ‘Hey, let’s make sure there is some relief out there for those people,’ ” said Phil Holmes, vice president of the Magic Kingdom, the flagship Disney World park.

What if Fantasyland is swamped with people but adjacent Tomorrowland has plenty of elbow room? The operations center can route a miniparade called “Move it! Shake it! Celebrate It!” into the less-populated pocket to siphon guests in that direction. Other technicians in the command center monitor restaurants, perhaps spotting that additional registers need to be opened or dispatching greeters to hand out menus to people waiting to order.

“These moments add up until they collectively help the entire park,” Mr. Holmes said.

In recent years, according to Disney research, the average Magic Kingdom visitor has had time for only nine rides — out of more than 40 — because of lengthy waits and crowded walkways and restaurants. In the last few months, however, the operations center has managed to make enough nips and tucks to lift that average to 10.

“Control is Disney’s middle name, so they have always been on the cutting edge of this kind of thing,” said Bob Sehlinger, co-author of “The Unofficial Guide: Walt Disney World 2011” and a writer on Disney for Frommers.com. Mr. Sehlinger added, “The challenge is that you only have so many options once the bathtub is full.”

Disney, which is periodically criticized for overreaching in the name of cultural dominance (and profits), does not see any of this monitoring as the slightest bit invasive. Rather, the company regards it as just another part of its efforts to pull every possible lever in the name of a better guest experience.

The primary goal of the command center, as stated by Disney, is to make guests happier — because to increase revenue in its $10.7 billion theme park business, which includes resorts in Paris and Hong Kong, Disney needs its current customers to return more often. “Giving our guests faster and better access to the fun,” said Thomas O. Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, “is at the heart of our investment in technology.”

Disney also wants to raise per-capita spending. “If we can also increase the average number of shop or restaurant visits, that’s a huge win for us,” Mr. Holmes said.

Disney has long been a leader in technological innovation, whether that means inventing cameras to make animated films or creating the audio animatronic robots for the attraction It’s a Small World.

Behind-the-scenes systems — typically kept top secret by the company as it strives to create an environment where things happen as if by magic — are also highly computerized. Ride capacity is determined in part by analyzing hotel reservations, flight bookings and historic attendance data. Satellites provide minute-by-minute weather analysis. A system called FastPass allows people to skip lines for popular rides like the Jungle Cruise.

But the command center reflects how Disney is deepening its reliance on technology as it thinks about adapting decades-old parks, which are primarily built around nostalgia for an America gone by, for 21st century expectations. “It’s not about us needing to keep pace with technological change,” Mr. Staggs said. “We need to set the pace for that kind of change.”

For instance, Disney has been experimenting with smartphones to help guide people more efficiently. Mobile Magic, a $1.99 app, allows visitors to type in “Sleeping Beauty” and receive directions to where that princess (or at least a costumed stand-in) is signing autographs. In the future, typing in “hamburger” might reveal the nearest restaurant with the shortest wait.

Disney has also been adding video games to wait areas. At Space Mountain, 87 game stations now line the queue to keep visitors entertained. (Games, about 90 seconds in length, involve simple things like clearing runways of asteroids). Gaming has also been added to the queue for Soarin’, an Epcot ride that simulates a hang glider flight.

Blogs that watch Disney’s parks have speculated that engineers (“imagineers,” in the company’s parlance) are also looking at bigger ideas, like wristbands that contain information like your name, credit card number and favorite Disney characters. While Disney is keeping a tight lid on specifics, these devices would enable simple transactions like the purchase of souvenirs — just pay by swiping your wristband — as well as more complicated attractions that interact with guests.

“Picture a day where there is memory built into these characters — they will know that they’ve seen you four or five times before and that your name is Bobby,” said Bruce E. Vaughn, chief creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. “Those are the kinds of limits that are dissolving so quickly that we can see being able to implement them in the meaningfully near future.”

Dreaming about the future was not something on Mr. Holmes’s mind as he gave a reporter a rare peek behind the Disney operations veil. He had a park to run, and the command center had spotted trouble at the tea cups.

After running smoothly all morning, the spinning Mad Tea Party abruptly stopped meeting precalculated ridership goals. A few minutes later, Mr. Holmes had his answer: a new employee had taken over the ride and was leaving tea cups unloaded.

“In the theme park business these days,” he said, “patience is not always a virtue.”

By Robin Harding in Washington, Bernard Simon in Toronto and Christian Oliver in Seoul

Published: | Last updated: December 27 2010 22:04

Some of the world’s strongest banks have profited from an emergency credit facility set up by the US Federal Reserve to shore up confidence in the global financial system, according to a Financial Times analysis of data released by the Fed.

More than half of lending under the Fed’s term auction facility – the largest of its crisis programmes – went to foreign banks. Details of the varied uses to which they put it may add to political criticism of the Fed.
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The Taf was set up in December 2007 to provide one-month loans to creditworthy banks as markets dried up for lending longer than overnight. In August 2008, it began offering three-month loans as well.

Rabobank of the Netherlands and Toronto-Dominion of Canada, two of the only banks in the world with triple A credit ratings, used more than $20bn in cumulative Taf loans.

Ed Clark, TD chief executive, said that using Taf was logical even though his bank never had a liquidity problem. “That wasn’t how we made a lot of money. But you make a dollar here, you make a dollar there. What’s the spread you make on a billion dollars?” he said.

In the summer of 2008, TD was borrowing $1bn from TAF at rates of between 2 and 2.5 per cent. For that borrowing it used the lowest quality – and hence highest yielding – collateral acceptable to the Fed.

More than 80 per cent of its collateral had a triple B credit rating at a time when such bonds yielded about 7 per cent. TD could therefore have made a notional gross spread of about $4m a month during 2008.

Mr Clark said the authorities were encouraging healthy banks to use schemes such as the Taf so as not to stigmatise their weaker counterparts. In January 2008, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said the Taf appeared to be succeeding because “there appears to have been little if any stigma”.

“You go through the whole crisis and there were lots of things we did that weren’t necessarily economic but were the right thing to do for the system,” said Mr Clark. “So I’m not embarrassed by this at all.”

Rabobank said it used the Taf only “in case the situation on the financial markets would further deteriorate” but it still had $5bn in outstanding loans as late as January 2010.

The Fed declined to comment, but has pointed out that all of its emergency credit was repaid in full with interest, and that its goal was to provide liquidity.

Korean banks, including Hana Bank, Korea Development Bank, Industrial Bank of Korea and Shinhan Bank, were also among the most enthusiastic posters of triple B collateral to the Taf.

One Korean bank official said: “It was the best option we had for raising foreign capital during the financial crisis.”

This year, spot prices have soared 45% from June to an all-time high of $1.60 a pound in September, before tumbling back to a low of 88 cents by late October. Now they fetch around 96 cents. “It’s getting completely out of whack,” said Chris Kunzler, president of Kunzler & Co., a Lancaster, Pa., bacon processor.

The CME’s lean-hogs contract is more actively traded. But belly prices sometimes differ from hog prices, meaning traders can’t use the two interchangeably.